Refund Perth councils for mergers: Labor

The West Australian government should refund the money that metropolitan councils have wasted on the failed council mergers plan, the opposition says.

Premier Colin Barnett appears to have abandoned the contentious plan after ratepayers in three councils - Kwinana, South Perth and East Fremantle - voted against the change at the weekend.

The WA Local Government Association then withdrew its support, prompting Mr Barnett to tell ABC radio he had "failed" and "put up the white flag".

The plan sank further on Tuesday, when the Shire of Mundaring and the Town of Bassendean voted in favour of withdrawing from the process.

They have complained the state government has not formally advised them about the future of the merger proposal, and want certainty after a drawn-out process.

Opposition local government spokesman David Templeman said the state government should address the matter but instead Liberal MPs are in the state's south for the party's annual conference.

He said local governments should be paid back the money they had spent on the process.

Town of Bassendean mayor John Gangell said the process had cost some councils more than $1.5 million and had been stressful for local government employees, who worried about their jobs.

"The local government sector has endeavoured to work with the government, but the problem is they kept changing the goalposts," Mr Gangell told AAP.

"That really made it hard.

"Then when they came out and said they weren't going to fully fund the process, that's when they lost a lot of local governments.

"It's an absolutely diabolical mess."

Mr Templeman said the premier had dismissed community concerns about the mergers.

"It's his style: he's dictatorial, he's arrogant, and now the egg is firmly in his face," he told reporters.